The Cruelest Dream
by GhostHelwig
Summary: A look back on the culdesac... Rated T for light swearing, dark themes, slight slash, and spoiler character death...


Disclaimer – I do not own or profit from Ed, Edd N Eddy. Therefore, kidnapping me would be pointless. Rated T for some light swearing, dark themes, slight slash, and (SPOILER!) character death.

Dedicated to my dear friend, who goes under the name Inuyasha's Kitty here... I hope you all like this; especially you, dear, whom I wrote this for...

Because this site is cracking down on a rule I wasn't even aware of, I removed all song lyrics from this fic and reposted it, rather than get my account deleted. Therefore, if you wish to read the _actual_ version of this story the way I'd intended it to be, please go to www. geocities. com /GhostHelwig and read it there (spaces must be removed for link to work).

Anyway, enjoy. Peace, all.

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The Cruelest Dream

by Ghost Helwig

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I remember how it used to be. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who does. Jimmy likes to tell me, "put it behind you, Sarah. That part of our lives is over." But is it though? Is it really? 

...and do I even want it to be?

I used to complain about my life every chance I got. I'd bitch and moan, I'd whine – but now I know things really were better then. They really were the best years of my life. I wish I could go back and tell everyone that. Nazz and Kevin and Rolf and Jonny and even a younger Jimmy and a younger me – I wish I could tell them to enjoy being young, to stop being so caught up in their looks or their pride or their 'old country' ways or their imaginary friends or their femininity or their fear to let go and have fun.

I wouldn't bother telling the Eds. Somehow, they always knew.

The dreams we used to have – I remember them all so clearly. How can Jimmy say I should let go when if I did I'd be forgetting who we were? Sometimes, I don't like Jimmy all that much. But he's all I have left in the world...

Jimmy never did become a movie star. Nor did Kevin have that amazing career in sports all his coaches promised him. And Nazz never was a model like she secretly wanted...

None of us did what we were supposed to.

And I don't know how it went so wrong,. It seems it just... _did_. And we were all left picking up the pieces, trying to put our lives back on track.

It turns out, not a one of us was really good at puzzles.

It doesn't look like it used to around here. Most of the lawns are yellowing, the paint on the houses cracking and peeling. I think it looks like a ghost town. Every time I say that Jimmy gets that high-pitched whine in his voice that I think he actually perfected and tells me I'm scaring him, so I've learned to keep quiet about it. I don't think he really wants to hear what I have to say anyway, whether the thoughts are 'scary' or not.

I wish there were someone else I could talk to, someone who was there and understands what it is we all lost. But there isn't. Not anymore.

I think there's a curse on this place. When I look out my bedroom window at night, when I look at all the decay around me, all I can see is shadows and pain. I think someone has cursed this place, cursed everyone who lives here to a lifetime of suffering.

Or maybe the blackness I see – maybe it's just me.

We blew it, all of us did. We were so bright, we had such promise – I hear those whispers from my parents' room all the time. We were the future...

And what a future it turned out to be. I don't understand how we got here. And I don't _want_ to. I just want to go back. To go back to when everything was simpler, the future was beautiful, and we had our whole lives ahead of us...

Could someone do that for me? Send me back? Because if they could, I'd give them the world...

But I can't keep thinking about that. I'm not going to get it. No one can turn back time – it just isn't possible. But if it was...

I don't know what I'd change, though. Maybe I'd go back, and it would all still happen this way. Maybe there was no way out.

For any of us.

I wish I were all-knowing, brilliant – or at the very least, just smart enough to see where things got off-track. Unless this _was_ the track. In which case God is a cruel woman indeed.

Hard as it is to believe, I sometimes think maybe this will get better. 'Time heals all wounds', isn't that what they say?

But then my brain retaliates with: _'_who _says, Sarah? Who says time heals anything at all? It hasn't healed _you_ yet, has it?' _

And that's true. It hasn't.

It hasn't healed _her_ yet, either. Nazz. She's so... I don't think she'll ever recover from the pain she's had to endure. I'd talk to her about it, only... she doesn't really like to talk to me.

Out of all of us, I think she had the best chance of getting out. Yes, Double D had the huge I.Q., but he also had a loyalty to my brother and that stupid Eddy. Nazz didn't really have that kind of connection to anyone.

But then Kevin...

He got her pregnant. He swore up and down he'd love her forever and never leave her side. And he lied.

I know this, because he told me he loved _me_ forever, swore up and down he'd never leave my side as I was giving him my virginity in the backseat of his car.

Then she announced her pregnancy to the world, announced that Kevin was going to make her his bride, at around the same time I was telling anyone who'd listen that Kevin was going to marry me and take me on my dream honeymoon to Europe. Needless to say, we weren't pleased when we found out about each other.

I still thought he'd marry me. She still thought he'd marry her.

And Kevin's parents solved the problem by sending him to college in Florida somewhere and moving somewhere far away themselves, no forwarding address left behind for what turned out to be their grandson.

I heard Kevin died of alcohol poisoning a year later, at a frat party. Big loss.

Nazz got pregnant again, too, even though she was still in school. One kid, her parents let her stay in school – two, she had to get a job. So she dropped out and got one.

The father? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but rumor has it that she and Rolf had some sort of experience in his barn one night, and that's why he and his family moved back to the 'old country' – wherever that is. No paternal grandparents – not to mention _father_ - for her daughter, either.

I'd like to talk to Nazz, find out if she's okay, see if my hunch about what exactly it was that left her pregnant for a second time and with new scars in her eyes is true, but there's too much between us... Even if there wasn't Kevin, I know she resents me, for I know who she was, and how much she's changed, how much she failed to live up to her potential...

Though no one failed quite as spectacularly as Double D.

I wonder if his parents know he should've been in and out of college by now. Do they know what he spends his savings on, instead of that weird microscope thing he always wanted? Have they seen how gaunt he is now, how skinny and wasted in more ways than one?

Come to think of it...

In the years since everything went so wrong in _his_ life, have they even been home?

...Even once?

You can hear his guitar chords anytime you pass by the house, night or day. I know he hates that pedal steel guitar, but he plays it anyway. Sometimes I wonder – is it some kind of punishment? Or just a way to hold onto his lost childhood?

Actually, I bet it's a bit of both.

I know things would be different for him if Eddy were still here. But Eddy...

Eddy died.

No. That isn't it. That isn't true.

Eddy slit his wrists. Eddy bled himself dry. He left Double D here, all alone.

And for someone whose parents abandoned him years ago, I can only imagine how much that must've hurt.

And Eddy... I didn't realize Eddy had that in him. I like to think, if I _had_ known, I would've been nicer to him-

But I doubt it.

Because Eddy annoyed me. And I was always cruel to anyone or anything that annoyed me. It's just my way. I am not, nor will I ever be, a nice person.

But I don't think it would've mattered even if I had been nice. Eddy couldn't live with his guilt, and nothing I or Double D or anyone else said could set him free of it...

All because of a stupid scam. Too many chemicals left out, too much poison left within Ed's reach... We all should've known what would happen. You'd think _Double D_ would've known, but if even _he_ couldn't see it coming...

I heard Eddy told him that, too, that he should've known, should've done something, but I know he didn't mean it. Eddy just always needed someone besides himself to blame, and that someone was always Double D – I guess Double D was just convenient... And he'd take it, which no one else would do... But I don't think Eddy told Double D the truth before he died – you can see it in Double D's red eyes that he blames himself for all of it, and I'd kill Eddy for that if, y'know...

Because really, Ed survived so many things that would've killed or at least sickened other people-

Who would've thought a stray bottle and ten minutes to himself would kill him?

I miss him. It's the strangest thing. I spent all that time hating him, poured all that energy into it, and the only two people who cried harder than me at his funeral were his fellow Eds.

Eddy cried the hardest, had to be led from the funeral by the hand like a child. And by the time Eddy's funeral rolled around less than a month later, Double D had no tears left. I watched him almost the whole time, and he didn't shed a single one.

But if you pass by his house, you can sometimes hear his weeping along with the strains of his guitar, practically smell his tears along with the sweet aroma of pot. For a drug that relaxes you, I don't think it's helping him any.

Jonny disappeared not long after the funerals. No one knows where he went, or why, and with all the grief so fresh I'm ashamed to say no one but his frantic parents really paid all that much attention to him being gone. But I find myself wondering now, and wondering why he chose to leave Plank behind...

But does it matter, though? I mean, really? When our lives are all over (which seems so _close_ now, it really does), will any of us be remembered? By anyone?

I guess I have managed to pinpoint when it all went wrong, though.

Ed's death.

Ever since then, none of us have been alright.

I wonder what life would be like if that stupid scam hadn't gone so horribly wrong. Truthfully, I doubt I would've slept with Kevin, because I wouldn't have been depressed enough (yes, Ed's death made me _depressed_, got a problem with it!) to believe his lies so easily. And Eddy wouldn't have died, nor would Double D be a druggie with so much wasted potential it even bothers _me_.

Maybe it would've even saved Nazz, because y'know, she never would've dated any of the Eds, but I know they built up her confidence by adoring her – and maybe if they'd still been around, she wouldn't have let Kevin use her like he did...

In some weird way, I think Eddy was the balance that kept Kevin in check.

And Double D was the heart inside Eddy's chest – I know that now. Because I think back on the way they looked at each other, and I realize that I never stood a chance with Double D.

But Eddy lost it when they lost Ed, and he ruined his chance with Double D by blaming him for it. Now that I think about it, that _definitely_ contributed to his death... How could he live believing he'd killed his best friend and blown his chance with the guy he obviously loved?

...oh my God, I think I'm _pitying_ Eddy.

I guess times really _are_ different.

So maybe if Ed had lived, we'd all be happy. I think maybe we would be. Kevin would be here, living, maybe dating Nazz but treating her right. I would've saved myself for someone who actually loved me. Jonny would still be here (I guess... because truthfully, I think he left when he just couldn't take it anymore, and I don't blame him for that, not a bit). Eddy and Double D would be together, and Ed would be happy for them, just as I'd be happy for Kevin and Nazz.

So if I get a wish, I think that's what I'd like it to be. For Ed to have lived.

...and even if it changed nothing, I'd still wish for that, for my brother back.

I didn't realize until I saw Double D streaking towards our phone that horrible day that lives could change so quickly, that someone you yelled at just that morning to stop spilling his cereal everywhere or you'd tell Mom could be gone in a matter of minutes. I didn't know life was so easily taken - or made, either. I always thought it was hard.

But the hardest part is living once that change has been made.

I want to let go of this, Jimmy. I want to move on. But I've never been one to be ruled by her head instead of her heart.

I can hear Jimmy calling me. My boyfriend. Not that he loves me, or I love him, but... We date anyway. I don't think either of us knows why. Maybe just because we're the only ones left who can understand.

Not that he gives me peace. Nothing gives me peace. Nothing can.

I hear sirens now. I look out my window, and big surprise – an ambulance is pulling up to Double D's house. My first thought is completely disconnected from me: _I wonder how they knew to come?_

I hear Jimmy's voice again – it's coming from outside. Of course. He must've gone to visit Double D while I was lost in my reverie. And for just a moment, I hope...

For Double D's sake, I hope they got there too late.

...I'd wonder if I'm going to hell for that, but I'm already there.


End file.
